


Bonds

by yuriAza



Category: Original Work
Genre: Cooperative Isolation Universe, Demonic Possession, Gen, Robots, Science Fiction, Shapeshifting, Superpowers, Urban Fantasy, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-04-19 15:49:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4752065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuriAza/pseuds/yuriAza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A demon or a god offered you the tools to do what you’ve always wanted, or was it what it always wanted? Does it even matter anymore? After all that’s happened, do we still need each other? About how relationships can ruin our social lives.<br/>Am I many, or are we One?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Acceptance I.1 (alter-ego)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Worm](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/142361) by wildbow. 
  * Inspired by [Ava's Demon](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/142367) by Michelle Czajkowski. 
  * Inspired by [Puella Magi Madoka Magica](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/142406) by Studio Shaft. 
  * Inspired by [Anima Extract](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/142940) by Mark-MrHiDE-Patten. 



> Bonds' [Web Fiction Guide entry](http://webfictionguide.com/listings/bonds/)

Act I - Acceptance

 

I kept muttering to myself the whole train ride: see, I was going over vocabulary with Hermes for an upcoming test (him having perfect memory and all), but I could almost feel the social repulsion field that seeming non-neurotypical was throwing out onto everyone within earshot. The things I do for school.

After I told him for the umpteenth time that he didn’t get his reward until both I got home and we had gone through at least 150 words, I felt the calm but earnest slowing and then subtle jolt of the train pulling into the station and the maglocks engaging.

The doors opened. [New Mumbai AB (Alexander Bolonkin) Dome 15, next stop, Dome 4] reported the train.

I walked over the gap (don’t break your mother’s back!) onto the platform and into the cold summer night air.

As soon as I left the station and its bright lights on my way to my studio apartment, I was reminded of the fact that I did not exactly live in an expensive neighborhood (especially not an arco).

“I’d ambush us from that dark alley yonder,” Hermes pointed behind me with a vague flick of his tail.

Sure enough, a group of nearly a dozen kids started meandering out of that very same alley’s mouth towards me.

I knew immediately that they did not go to college and that they knew that I did.

I shifted my messenger bag and lengthened my strides, shifting gears. They pursued the chase from the other side of the empty street.

“Shouldn’t you just call someone, or use one of those apps your mother made you get?” Hermes asked idly, eyes still on the approaching gang.

“Well I don’t need them when I have you, and I don’t wanna get anyone in trouble,” I muttered the half joking reply.

A tall boy from within the group, over-bright smile on his face, crossed the street and the others followed. “Smiles” cut me off and I was surrounded in open sidewalk. No one else in sight.

“Can I help you?” I started.

“Yeah, sure, about that…” came the suggestive reply from an older boy in a tuque.

A girl older than me with a violet stripe in her hair reached into her coat pocket.

Hermes started hissing, not that anyone but me could hear him.

Someone behind me grabbed my wrist.

I reached up to the base of my neck with my other hand (Smiles’ grin stretched even wider) and touched the burning mark above my sternum.

Light flashes out from it, momentarily engulfs me, and fades. My spines reach their normal length and my vision stretches as I can both see and feel the familiar wispy glow of my body heat leaking into the cold night air off my skin. I am armored, stark, and alive. Hermes smiles.

 

\---

 

The whole group steps back.

Tuque is still holding my wrist around the scutes, and I gently pour scalding heat into his hand, like opening tiny shutters in my skin, and his reflexes unhand me before he can consciously think to. He holds his hand and glances down expecting a burn and glares back at me in apprehension.

“Go on now,” I bluff, trying to hide the shake in my voice.

“Fuck this,” mutters Violette. She charges me, knife out and forward.

I jump to the left, and she clips me on my right stomach. My adrenaline boils over and I bathe her in hurt, like a flashlight to my eyes. She was a bad-girl onee-san anyway.

She crumples at my feet and twitches, smells a tad like burnt hair. I glance down and see the small IR-neon trickle of blue warm blood on my belly, and put my hand to it. Someone else charges me and they tumble to my feet as I irradiate them too, but careful this time not to burn.

Smiles stops smiling.

I throw him my best haphazard glare and hiss slightly, “Just go.”

We all stare each other in the eyes for a breath.

Those that can walk bolt, and Tuque feverishly reaches in to help Violette up and away.

After the last of them turned the corner, I flashed back and Hermes surmised “You’re bad at this.”

I walked home in silence, as normal as ever, not a scratch on me.


	2. I.2 (reflections)

Once I had gotten in my door and it autolocked, I let my bag slide off onto the floor and I collapsed into my comfier chair of the two that I owned. I straightened my legs aloft into the air, and my smart end-table eagerly jumped at the chance to wheel under them, where I let them fall. I let myself calm down by looking around.

My studio apartment was the best government student subsidies could buy. A creaky bed, my two chairs, a closet, a round kitchen table, a desk, all dumb. My pet slash stool slash smart end-table. A kitchenette, a bathroom with an unmounted tub, and a full height mirror across from the bed. Peeling earthy wallpaper, plastic flooring. Hermes.

I’d had Hermes for almost a year now. Not long after I got to college, the little metallic steel-blue silver lizard with eight legs and lacquer-red eyes had just shown up, and asked for a contract. It had taken me almost a week to realise that I was the only one that could see him and to answer yes. Then I just had my little circular tattoo on my collar, which Hermes always said was his sigil, without having ever touched an ink needle in my life.

The first shift was weird and by total accident.

Shifting absorbs and replaces not just your body, but most things on you, including clothes. Which is a blessing, because it’s not that you can wear clothes after shifting anyway. But it felt right, being that dragon-thing, suddenly confident in my naked, new body, and I knew without a doubt that its (or was it my, or our?) name was Hot Mess, some half cheesy, half cryptic pop culture reference.

Even without testing its limits, it was obvious that my new, second body was stronger, tougher, keener, and faster, not to mention the claws, armor, and tail. And it only took one accident to discover that cuts and scrapes do not swap bodies when I do.

Then I’d realized I could shoot fire. Dragons or something, right?

Well, when I’m in my other body I can’t shoot fire; but whatever it is that comes out of my skin at my beck and call heats things. I can cook popcorn without touching it, cause pain with a gaze, boil water without getting the glass too hot, make metal glow orange (that one can take a while), and even make thermals.

After a few months, I started doing it subconsciously, even in my normal body. My drinks are always piping hot and just right, and I’m never ever cold.

But the strangest part is that my other body can see heat; like literal thermal night vision. I eventually worked out that it has little pits on its cheekbones like a snake. I can get along pretty much fine even with my eyes closed when shifted. The closest thing to what my less physical abilities look like that I’ve seen with my sixth sense is a microwave oven when turned on.

Calmer and now on an adrenaline low, I got up, took my computer out of my bag, and set it up on my desk. I started surfing the Mnet.

The latest news was the same as ever, transglobal employment at its lowest in decades, terrorists being busted left and right, the recent string of spectacular failures by the Extranormal Specialist Protections and all the talking heads and heads of government wondering why the program even existed.

The ESPers had only been around for 20 years, and it was obvious that someone or someones were very committed to it being around, but most people were weirded out by an international paramilitary coalition with cutting-edge funding and technology that didn’t seem to do anything. The conspiracy theories were still maturing.

Not like I had anything to do with the ‘supernatural’.

Meanwhile, I had an email copy of a PM from who-knows-which-forum titled [She who knows not Cold] that simply said: [if you have one too (and I think you do), we should meet up IRL, discuss. PM me back  --  BeasteHerding101].

Not that I had any idea what some stranger was talking about.

I sighed, leaning back in my other chair, and its wood creaked.

Tomorrow was just going to be another day of school, nothing was any different from normal levels of stress.


	3. I.3 (a b and c)

School was school. Y’know.

I was still only really taking Gen Ed because I really didn’t know what else to do. I liked plants and people, but medical school or some biology doctorate was an investment my parents and finances would pale at. The job market being the way it was - what was it again, 40-some-odd percent unemployment? - I had no idea what was actually realistic enough to plan for, even less that I would actually want to be doing day-in-day-out.

But for now, I could just put off the planning another semester and focus on the classes I had now. Today was an easier day because half my classes were just reviewing for their next test, and I was basically on track. Hermes just sat in the corners of my desks sleeping, or occasionally chuckling to himself when he was bothering to follow along.

New Mumbai University was old, but proud and well taken care of, with big concrete steps and neo-deco fake brickwork and wide open spaces, even some wood tables here and there in the older parts. It was just a city college and not a high ranking school by any stretch of the imagination, but it had the taxes and population of a major city backing it, and it had been in its own arcology since almost the beginning. All the students would hang out in the adjacent Dome 8, which had for a long time been the only one that connected to the college, and that had shaped “Stud8’s” economy and feel.

While I was hurrying back up the steps after a short two-way train ride to get lunch, as I did every school day, Hermes prancing to stretch his octet of legs in the enriched sunlight, I saw Anton and stopped to say hi.

Anton Mynhov and I knew each other, but we didn’t know-know each other. We had shared some classes, mostly biology and humanities, and even picked each other for working on group projects and had gone to the same secondary school, but I didn’t really know him in any personal context, nor him I.

“What’s up, Anton?” I waved as he walked down the steps at an angle towards me.

“Ah, Mari,” he said in his voice that was always slightly too quiet. “I am perfect, how are you being treated by circumstances?”

“Well, you know, same old same old. I got in a scuffle with some gang.”

“What?” he said, eyes and voice narrowing.

“Nuuuuuuuuthin’.”

“Well, that is okay, I suppose” he replied slowly, turning his head sidelong as I continued up the steps.

We chatted phatically as we headed off to the same class.

 

\---

 

Done with classes for the day, and with a sleeping Hermes around my shoulders, I was in a good mood. I took an unnecessary walk around the major ring of Dome 8 from one train transfer to the next on my way home. No-one in sight, the beginnings of sunset marking the civic dead zone between the commute home and dinner.

Almost skipping, I barely noticed as I stepped on a blue-white glowing smudge of a line on the wide footpath that was near the perimeter of the dome.

“That was a mistake,” Hermes observed flatly the moment that same thought crossed my mind.

I stopped and removed my earbuds from under my fox scarf-hat, listening.

It came flying out from somewhere ahead of me, and I couldn’t get a good look at it until it hit the ground, chipping the concrete of the footpath.

It... He - I tried not to blush at the sight - wasn’t really organic, but nor was he really stone. He was a slick and angular obsidian that all but glowed like a blacklight against the young, dull blue sunset coming in through the dome, heavy and solid and male and there. He held some kind of glowing sword that looked similar to the smudge I had stepped on, but he shifted his weight hesitantly, absorbing me as I was absorbing him, his eyes flat glowing parallelograms of featureless white.

I reacted first, pulling on my collar to expose Hermes’ sigil before I could think of anything good to say alongside. “I - You... uh, have one too, right?” I hedged.

His stone face nearly blushed in obvious relief as his shoulders relaxed. His grip on the sword loosened and he let it hang from his arm at his side, no longer on guard. “Jesus, I thought I’d have to knock you out or something.” His voice was gravelly but deep and soothing. Grounded.

“Show him more of your knockers, press the advantage,” Hermes said in complete seriousness.

As I blushed and pursed my lips, face locking up, I... connected?... with the stranger somehow. I saw the flash of a mirage of what must have been his other form, a boy with a shock of dye-black hair in a science lab that was lit like a rave.

His present body was taken aback by Hermes.

“You can see Hermes, ...Five Second Rule?”, I asked, as much a question to him as to myself.

“Only because you let me,” he explained, which didn’t explain anything. “You’ve never met any other chimerae before, have you?”

“Chimerae, appropriate name; not what I would have chosen, but appropriate,” Hermes said thoughtfully, rolling the word around in his lipless mouth.

“You’d be the first, ...” I verified, only just starting to calm down.

“Everyone just calls me Five. Wait, I think I recognize you from school. My birth name is Taylor Alexander.”

“I’m Mari Arnitt. With Hermes I’m Hot Mess,” I replied. “You’re in the arts college, right? I think I’ve seen you around.”

He nodded, then glanced around, and shifted back in a brief flash of spectral light.

Taylor was very tall and rail thin, almost effeminate. He was wearing a double-breasted coat with fake fur around the hood and collar, and black jeans. His hair was shaggy and dyed black in a way that matched his soft-black piercings. His dark blue eyes, which matched the edges of the glow of his other form, peaked out from under his dabbled bangs and looked extremely deep. The only thing that kept me from being sucked in was what must have been his companion popping into existence next to him.

And the fact he was still holding the glowing sword.

“Thought I’d return the favor,” he explained.

His companion was like a little piece of some old ‘cyberspace’ movie, a midsize black cube with pulsing blue angular lines. “Ooh, another friend it seems. I like the clothes, they match your hair. And the rule of thirds. I like the buildings over there, they’re shiny and modern,” it said as it flitted through the air, in a pauseless voice that would only fit on someone under eight.

“Forgive my demon, they're not nearly the art critic they think they are,” Taylor said. “I would know,” he added sullenly. “Anyway, this is Hephaestus. Prefers ‘they’ or ‘it’, bee-tee-dubs.”

“Demon?” I said.

“Demon, god, angel, ghost, eidolon, idea, archetype, all applicable,” Hermes interjected cryptically.

“Wait, everyone?” I said, still processing.

“Yeah, there’re a few dozen chimerae in a big city like this one,” Taylor replied, scratching the back of his neck. “Oh, speak of the devil.”

A short tween girl with mangled, armpit-length black hair came jogging out from around the bend and stopped when she got to us to stand next to Taylor, facing me. “Why'd you leave me all of a sudden, F- Taylor?” she huffed, catching her breath.

“Someone broke the perimeter I set up. So I came over to check,” he told her, “And voila: another noob chimera,” pointing to me.

“Heh heh, came,” the youngest human in sight chuckled. Taylor lightly punched her in the arm. “But ok. I’m Alex. Bottle Fairy.”

“Perimeter?”

Alex glanced at Taylor, raising one eyebrow, mouth straight.

Taylor scratched behind his neck sheepishly again, then held his sword up horizontal in front of him. “It’s what I do: this and the mark you stepped on. I can rub them on surfaces by touch and then peel them off. Kinda like stickers. And my sense of touch extends to them, basically.”

“Oh, I make heat,” I replied, finally adding something to the conversation.

“I make drugs,” Alex said, straight faced. Both Taylor and I stared at her. “Not really. But trust me, it’s good stuff.”

Well, each of us was good at making first impressions with absolutely no notice, apparently. 


	4. I.4 (d and e)

We talked, exchanged handles, said we’d meet up later, and then went our separate ways. Standard meet and greet. I hadn’t even known I was craving reciprocity, but at the same time I wasn’t so sure about joining some small friend group when I hadn’t met all the members. This ‘Bigger’ I heard mention of kinda gave me the creeps.

I walked away in silence for a time, not even putting my earbuds back in.

 

\---

 

When I neared the train station at the base of the thick utility spar that connected Dome 8 to the old Arcology 4, I lengthened my stride as I passed a small homeless camp, nestled into the old infrastructure. The few squatters that were visible where content to do nothing as long as I did the same.

But this one girl stared at me over her book (made out of paper!), bright and hard green eyes behind reading glasses that were the wrong size.

I blinked. I connected to her, and saw nothing but a red haze. A chimera cloaked in rage.

She put her book and glasses down on a crate outside her tent, rose, and walked up to me past a garbage-can fire. I noticed people edge away from her.

Everything about this young girl was damaged and almost burnt, her clothes old and mottled and frayed, her rebellious hair roughly hewn into submission. Short and scrawny, dirty and grubby, a fine layer of soot and grease on her skin. But her gem-like eyes shined from behind her bangs.

A pause. “I feel like you also control fire,” we both said at the same time. She smiled a little, suddenly shy. My face was blank.

Another awkward pause.

“Do you know Fives or Fairy?” I offered.

“Not really,” she replied, “Haven’t seen you though, you new?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, nice to meet you?” Almost making it a question. “I’m Samantha,” then suddenly hard, “don’t fuck with me.”

A third pause.

“Why?” I said, mind blank.

Her eyes softened, “Hope you never find out,” then, “haven’t talked with someone who’s not afraid of me in a while, all the enclaves know me too well,” she commented with a vague gesture to the onlooking homeless.

She tilted her head, inviting me to her ‘table’. I hesitated, but followed behind her into the camp. She sat in the mouth of her tent, I sat on a piece of glitched-out construction lamina. We talked about books and old movies.

 

\---

 

I ducked into a net-and-pastry cafe resolved to face the music. My pocket device was being blown up by this BeasteHerding101, but after the first hundred notifications with no end in sight, I knew I would have to stop and address the problem on a computer with a bigger screen.

I hustled across the cafe. The door set me up with a tab and I grabbed an open single booth, closing the door and setting the walls to opaque. I got my main computer out and sat down, miffed.

[Stop spamming me already/ What?]

[There you are, no response?] That was fast, was this a bot?

[We have nothing to discuss, you anon/ Stop spamming and take a Turing test or I’ll block you]

[Sure]

I blocked them anyway.

Then I got five messages, each from different platforms and different handles that all had the word ‘beast’ in them, all at the same time, that just said [But we are legion.]

Who did I even talk to? I reached for my blacklist.

[But seriously/ Now that I have your attention, I have to say I was disappointed by the (lack of) tease with Five Second Rule and Bottle Fairy/ My suspicions are all but confirmed, but pics would have been nice]

[Waat]

[Girl, I eat CCTV spimes for breakfast.]

[What, you think I’m in some AR guild?] I tried.

[Honey, here’s how this works:/ “Hi, my name is Mari Arnitt, I’m a chimera and a total noob”/ “Nice to meet you, my name is Sum Of All Fears, the humans call me AJ”]

[So I live in the one town overseen by a chimera hacker? How does that even work?]

[Yup!!/ But that would be telling~]

[Me: 0, Troll: 1/ Bye] was all I could say to that.

 

\---

 

I turned off my computer and sat back in the tiny booth for nearly a minute, exhausted. It had all been my little secret for almost a year, and then I just go and meet four chimerae in just a few hours.

Alright, I was going to go home, take a shower, eat ice cream, and sleep on it all, damn it. Then meet Fives’ friends; they seemed nice. I left the cafe, almost forgetting to pay.


	5. I.A 1 (setup)

The two girls stepped out of their cab and entered the dingy hotel they were going to stay in for the duration of the mission.

Well, one girl and one gynoid, Kyla reminded herself. Maggie was obviously not human, with her white hair, burnt but neon orange eyes, teal complexion, and the seams in her synth-skin, but given the amount of time they spent together, it was rather hard to remember that small fact.

They crossed the tiny excuse for a lobby to the front desk, enshrined in chicken wire. Mounted behind the counter was a midsize generic console. It was a newer replacement to the employee terminal that still sat unused, but was still quite old. 

Paint peeled on the walls in places. 

The console, a rough cylinder on a tripod, noticed their approach and lit up. However, before it could give some cookie-cutter welcome, Maggie whirred slightly as she doubtlessly was giving the console an overly firm digital handshake. 

The console spat out lamina receipts for the reservations, two keycards, and verification emails without further pleasantries, but hesitated to hand them over. 

Oh, right. 

Both Kyla and Maggie flashed their ESP badges in a way most beat cops would envy. They practiced. At least Kyla did. 

The Extranormal Specialist Protections was a shining example of international cooperation on the things that really mattered, all that shit. Frankly, Kyla could care less that the bigwigs were content to give a sixteen-year-old a gun and a security pass with free room and board. 

 

\---

 

Once they were relatively settled into their room, bags in a pile in front of the door, sheets on beds rewrinkled by a flop or two or five, they got down to business. 

Setting up the hardened, high bandwidth, low latency VPN proxy node to the ESPer network “back on the shelves” and plugging it in to stay charged. Plugging in the drone rack, removing the chocks and covers from the small quadcopters, and connecting the rack to both the node and the sliding door that opened onto the pitiful, dirty patio. Converting Maggie’s nightstand into a dedicated equipment cleaning and repair station and pulling it further toward the center of the room. Putting critical items in easy-access-easy-hide positions (mainly next to one side of each bed). Writing a brief legend for all the cables on the hotel’s suggestions lamina, and then immediately privatizing it. Setting the room to [Do not disturb, No room service]. 

All of it in productive silence. This was a pretty standard loadout for a first-in recon of a large, mid-level threat area. Getting ready to scope out a whole city for unmentionables or monsters or whatshit. 

Then the robot and the human found a rom-com chick-flick, which neither had seen but both had heard mildly good things about, and streamed it onto the wall, before ordering Asian takeout for an early dinner. 

 

\---

 

“So all the targets are from out of town? With all the rumors, no-one back at the Library has combed this city before?” Kyla asked, concentrating on her bioplastic takeout box, frustrated at trying to awkwardly navigate a fork. 

“Nope, we’re the first. Those files pinging was our in. The analysts hope they’re trying to network for local support. But remember, ‘Knife Angel’ and ‘Sign Angel’ are local and have only ever been sighted here in New Mumbai,” Maggie replied, voice flat and conversational despite the topic and the smirk on her face as she eyed Kyla’s fumbling next to her own perfect ease with chopsticks, popping a wonton into her mouth. 

“Remind me, robot, why you eat again?” Kyla looked up, leveling in mock confusion. 

“Well, human, I only have the equipment to reclaim minimal energy from food, but girl, can I taste!” 

Kyla’s smile burst into laughter, barely managing to not spill food onto the bed they were sitting on. She went back to her food, rooting through it with her fork. 

The food was actually not bad. Kyla knew nothing about cuisine or Asian culture or whatever, but this grub didn’t stick to her insides the way that cheap, generic food you could buy from identical buildings on every corner in every town did. She even had some idly unsettling ideas as to what parts some of the ingredients were, which was good in its own way. 

Better than shelter food or the stuff you got from dirt cheap vending terminals, which could somehow pass for meat and pastry and beverage at the same time. 

Better than the food some of her foster parents had made her eat every meal of every day. 

Better than the calories that had always failed to increase her weight, make her feel normal again. 

“So then what’s your favorite food, Mizz Taster-of-all-the-things?” Kyla tossed back after a delay. 

“All of it!” The gynoid replied without reservation. 


	6. I.A 2 (offer)

It had happened on a school day of all things. Kyla had already come to accept it, mostly.

Mostly.

There she was, in class, inanely staring out the floor to ceiling windows of the classroom, ruing over her latest personal issues during a break. On the verge of tears processing the feelings, coldly refining out the nuggets to use for later, the lessons in the pain, the wheat from the chaff of her heart and endocrine system. Stewing in her hormones.

Then this big dude, heavy under a dapper suit, sunglasses, and flesh colored earpiece, steam rolls through the classroom door, his presence having the weight she didn’t, and slides the door closed behind him.

Other preteen students give him a lazy gaze, and then returned to conversation.

Kyla just kicks her desk into the window and follows it through the shattered glastic on a three story drop.

Not even bothering to wonder why he’s here anyway.

 

\---

 

See, in utter disregard for logic and her best efforts, Kyla Norton weighs less than 4 kilograms. She reached this weight just as she had gotten to the right age to start thinking she was fat. She looked perfectly petite and her diet had never had an effect on her physique since. She had no control of it at all.

When it comes to jumping out three story windows, putting less weight into the same volume doesn’t affect the speed of the fall, naturally, but then again it's not the fall that kills you.

Kyla landed on the astroturf with a light patter, the ruined desk shattering behind her, and jumped back up to second story level where her current exit strategy was, over the rough ring of black vanes around the building.

Then a net, surprisingly heavy, hit her in the side and knocked her off course. She landed in a pile, skidding on the campus lawn.

A woman, one of several people in full riot getup behind the cover of the vanes, shot Kyla again with her net gun for good measure, the weighted tips of the net adhering to the ground with a small click.

Fuck.

Kyla struggled and grunted vainly, then stopped when she noticed a small gynoid, with soft white hair and skin, in full getup like the others but sans helmet, walked out and held up her fist, arm at right angles. The small crowd of po-po stood up out of cover at the gesture and eased their (less lethal, mostly) weapons. Most casually walked out.

“It’s pretty simple, Ms. Norton,” the (mil?-)gynoid said. “Either you get put in the vane, kicking and screaming, and you stay in prison until some bureaucrat finds you yet another foster-parent, or you come get in the vane, and we have a drive and a civil conversation.”

“Whatever could you want to discuss with me, ‘Officer Puppet’?” Kyla shot back.

The robot sighed. “One: I’m not a Puppet model, I’m a Mjolnir, missy. Two: the rest of your job interview, of course.”

Kyla R. Norton did absolutely nothing in response to that.

Something changed in Kyla’s expression as a trooper pulled off the nets, handcuffed her, and pulled her up sitting on the lawn. “A … job?”

“Yes. Income, and room and board so you never have to live in someone else’s house ever again.”

Kyla was silent for a long time, sitting there on the ground, the trooper standing behind her. She thought about her life: so many uncaring faces, so many hours on the scale, so many unhappy eyes staring at her for one reason or another, so many places that meant nothing to her.

“So who’s my employer?” the twelve-year-old finally asked.

“The ESPers,” was the reply, as what would become Kyla’s best friend turned around and beckoned Kyla’s captors to follow back to the vans, the sun in the clear sky overhead framing the scene.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: Sorry about the holiday break. I needed it. Should be posting once a month now.


End file.
